Religion

Scottish Government estimates that 14.3% of the Scottish population identifies as Catholic.

In 2019, Equality Here, Now checked the workforce data published across all Universities in Scotland as an aid to checking employment equality for Catholic people. The conclusion of that research was :

The elimination of sectarianism and religious discrimination, a pivotal part of the general equality duty, requires an explicit acknowledgement by all public sector bodies that institutional discrimination is alive and well and exists within and across the structures, policies and cultures which create each organisation as an individual legal entity. No such acknowledgment has been made by any of Scotland’s universities in the employment data reports published in 2019.

If changing the established order, the status quo, is accepted as key to the challenge in making equality a reality for Catholic people being discriminated against, as opposed to focusing only on the content of a biennial report, then recognition must be given to the inevitable resistance to change the established order will mount in an effort to maintain the status quo. An essential counter to this cultural roadblock to equality has to take the form of active and robust enforcement of the legal duties on equality.

In Scotland, the Equality & Human Rights Commission has deliberately chosen to adopt an ‘enforcement’ approach based on providing support and encouragement to public bodies which are identified as not meeting their duties.

Elsewhere in the UK, the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland [ECNI] takes a different approach. Using Fair Employment Monitoring Returns gathered annually across public and private sector employers, the ECNI has tracked progress since 2001 by employers in eliminating sectarianism and discrimination against Catholics in securing work. A reading of the latest aggregated data published by ECNI for 2013 shows the gap has closed significantly since 2001.

The journey taken by Universities in Scotland to reach this stage in delivering employment equality for people identifying as Catholic has been tracked by Equality Here, Now in research undertaken in 2017, 2015 and 2013.